Heartthrob

Big dreams meant big efforts, only garnering big results thereby.

Plans were made, and roles divided: Purity would disguise herself and head into town, to do her Christmas shopping; the other girls would go together, for safety purposes. That way, all of them would be safe, able to avoid detection, and able to actually get a little bit of mundane life to fill their hearts and minds before the training began. It would be... good. Refreshing, even.

A sliver of normalcy before the Hell of contract killing, justified and cathartic or otherwise.

Yet, when Purity left the room, wad of cash in glove-clad hands (some fetishwear adopted for more practical, fingerprint-concealing use), the Waywards all looked at one another. Smiles spread from one to the other, almost in unison, beginning with Est and ending with Zofia. Suddenly, a sense of unease made its way through Esper James's body; the three women's eyes weren't flashing, nor were any of them speaking, or even blinking. It was all a bit... well, honestly, a bit unsettling. For a few moments, as EJ stood gazing between the trio which loosely flanked her, she was struck by how much they resembled dolls - 'combat doll' indeed, it would seem

And then, near-simultaneously once more, they nodded. Each one looked to EJ, whose petite frame was now a-tremble with dread anticipation. "G... Girls? What, uh, what's... what's the deal, what's hap-"

Esthrielle rushed her in the blink of an eye, shoulder dropping low and arms thrown wide to tackle the ex-blonde. Zofia put a hand up above EJ's head, palm facing down, not quite touching the ghoul's crown; still, it was prohibitively close. And, to cap off this triple team attack, Lucretia made a sweep of the leg which was so casual-looking it was almost imperceptible - she wasn't even looking at Esper James as she did it.

Muscles roared to life, synapses firing and nerve endings crackling with death-defying electricity. Black blood went from a sludgy, gentle pace, into a torrential flow which had the second-living's veins taut as a drum and with pressure enough to nearly burst. Nearly.

A hop up, then, the secretary's body moving on its own - up over Lulu's foot, right knee raising as she did. Her head was close enough to Zofi's palm that she could feel the electric hum emanating from it... but, she never quite made contact. EJ's left hand rushed out like a surgical strike, firmly planting itself against Esthrielle's lowered shoulder, the flesh of the living dead straining but not buckling in its sudden fight against state-of-the-art pneumatic force. With her right, she sent a desperate push out at Lulu, hoping to... well, she wasn't really sure. There was no thought here, only fear, only panic.

Esthrielle was held back, her steel fangs flashing wide in a grin which held equal parts the bravado of a challenge answered, and the pride of a lover taken with their partner's prowess. Zofi's eyes widened like searchlights, and she nearly went to pull her hand away - but, as EJ lost what little momentum her hop had given, the Pole's confidence returned forthwith.

Lulu's smiled widened from ear to ear as her casual leg-sweep missed - but, then, EJ's unexpected push was sent out. Lucretia's body tensed in a moment's notice as though she planned to dodge... but, she relaxed as quickly as she had tensed, and took the push full-force. Stumbling away, she tumbled to the thick shag carpet below - and has been just resistant enough to give EJ something firm to push off of.

Esper James made some distance from the push: only a foot or two, but more than enough to tumble out of Esthrielle's path as she lost the ability to restrain her partner. The loose hoodie and sweats EJ had been wearing softened her landing nearly as much as that dense textile forest below, and once she landed, she scrabbled feverishly to stand once more.

As her head raised, gaze along with it, she was bewildered once again - to find all three women, from their new positions, beaming at her with various degrees of pride.

"Nice! Purity, aha... Puri wasn't lying, then, yeah? Make you panic, and suddenly, you're a little feral animal. Even trained soldiers can have trouble with responding to a situation that quickly, and without warning." Lucretia gazed up at the once-blonde woman, smug grin cladding her face in cocksure delight.

"Oi! Don't call my fucking girlfriend a 'little feral animal', hahaha~!" Esthrielle, now, from the heap she had fallen into on the bed, saw fit to interject. "If she's a little feral animal, she's my little feral animal! Puri's too, but, like, she's not here, so I get sole custody! I got the dog in the divorce!" This brought a new, raucous wave of laughter through the combat dolls; even Zofia, soft-spoken as she tended to be, put a hand over her mouth and cackled directly into it.

Esper James could not have been more confused. What the fuck was happening? She locked eyes with Esthrielle, once the white-haired Wayward had opened hers once more, laughter fading. Est just stared at her, grinning, for a few moments - until EJ's visible dismay and disorientation processed.

"Oh! EJ! You're... Oh, haha, sorry, sorry. Fuck. We, uhhh..." Esthrielle's mask of delight metamorphosed into bashfulness and the shy reluctance of a child who must admit their wrongdoing. Thankfully, at least for her, Zofia stepped in - perhaps in an attempt to cover for her comrade's reluctance.

"W-Well, haha...! Well, uh, we wanted to know, ah... We wanted to know where you were starting off, you know? Most... Well, you aren't taking your meds, right? Most second-living seem to be... suppressed, by them, and those are the ones we've usually dealt with. But, y-you've been off them for a while, and been having a regular intake of human blood, so..."

It was Zofia's turn to rub the back of her head and shut her eyes, attempting a sheepish grin and chuckle. Even Lucretia, most confident and brash of the Waywards, looked as though she were seeing their impromptu test in a new light. The three Easterners chuckled apologetically, trying their best to seem genuine in their shame and remorse.

Luckily, Esper James wasn't the type to hold a grudge against friends or lovers - and she was a bit of a pushover, anyways.

"Ahh...? I... O-Okay, yeah, sure. Sure. I... did I do good?" Esper James found the words somewhere within her chest, doing everything she could have to try and calm down. It wasn't easy; it never was, it seemed. Deep breathing, grounding exercises in her head, squeezing her hand so tightly her nails nearly broke her skin, and yet... still, it took her a few moments of awkward silence to un-seat her shoulders, much less regulate her breathing. The others noticed, surely - and it only deepened their unexpected shame, given the way Est's gaze dropped from EJ's own.

Est rolled over onto her back, shimmying forward and rising up to a hunched seat at the edge of the bed. A deep breath in, a deeper breath out, and a return of her eyes to Esper James's. "Yeah! Yeah, you, y-you did good, haha, uh... Fuck. S-Sorry, babe... it, uh. It seems kinda shitty, now, in retrospect, to scare you like that. I, uh, I understand if you're-"

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Her prose was sliced through like a tatami roll, words and intent falling away at EJ stomped over to her. A scowl of deep, black rage had overtaken the ghoul's features: her eyes had narrowed, her fangs were out, and her entire body had re-tensed in less than a moment's notice. She looked as ready to kill as she had ever, and her gaze - beneath those gentle, chocolaty lenses - was that of a woman possessed.

Esthrielle raised her hands up in an attempt at a calming gesture, but she couldn't help but keep them up just in case she was to be pounced upon. Lulu and Zofia were slow to move, each caught up in their own sudden shock at the seemingly split-second mood shift, from forgiveness to all-consuming fury. Neither could even make a sound as the ghoulette leapt.

Like one of Zeus's own lighting bolts, hurled with impunity and indignance, the smallest of the four woman hurtled through the air. She opened her mouth as she flew, letting out a battle cry two steps from a lion's roar, arms outstretched to tackle her bed-bound girlfriend. Est was too taken aback to roll out of the way, or even do much to try and avoid the oncoming attack - rather, the best she could do was put up a synthetic arm to catch EJ on the chest as she flew. And, then, the carnivore was upon her.

A second of snarling, chomping at the air, struggle with felt largely performative - and, then, giggling. Snickering, chuckling, cackling, and deep, belly-shaking laughter, all of it positively erupting from the lovely little lady with the long black hair and the long white canines. Her body slumped free of all tension, eyes shut gently and mouth split wide with mirth. She kicked her feet playfully as wave after wave of amusement coursed out of her open maw, much to the confusion of the assembled Waywards - until, finally, Lulu began to cackle as well. Zofia followed behind, ever eager to impress Lucretia... and after a few more moments of shock and uncertaintly, Esthrielle came around.

"Hah! Hah! How do you like getting scared like that, dumb ass?! Haaa-ha-ha-ha!" EJ wiggled in the hold Est had now taken of her, happily sharing her body heat and joy with her lover. Esthrielle playfully frowned as Esper James called her a 'dumb ass', putting a hand up to ruffle her babygirl's hair and sarcastically admonish her.

"Oh? Who're you calling dumb ass, dumb ass? Fuckin'... talk to me that way, scare me like that, I'll put you through your fucking paces! I'm sure I could find a crop around here or something, get Lulu and Zofi to help me tie you up, show you who's in charge here! Hahaha!" Esthrielle let the words flow from her like water, all but unaware of how blatantly sexual they were - the haze in the air having since stripped away inhibition as a result of her willing de-activation of inbuilt filtration. However, while she was oblivious to just how overt her words were... she was anything but unaware of the effect they were having on EJ.

Raised heart rate, quickened blood flow, normally slow breathing having hitched almost imperceptibly upward... rising warmth throughout the ghoul's entire person, and a screwing-up of her face that set a bit of a wobble to her lips. Of course, unlike the Waywards, EJ couldn't hide her blush.

Est's amusement trickled down from laughter to a more confident, cocksure, carnal level. Her brows set themselves lower, her eyes grew half-lidded; she lowered her hands from EJ's upper back to either hip, taking a hold of the ghoul that could be described, by academics and scholarly sorts, as domineering - holding her in the same way one holds a freshly-purchased toy, once they get it home and begin to examine it.

EJ's girlish fawning only grew more intense as Esthrielle fixed her with that look. Breath caught in the neo-ravenette's throat as Est took such a possessive hold of her, fingers gently pressing into supple flesh through the thin layer of her sweatpants; EJ felt her heart leap up to match her frozen breath, and when Est flashed her a steel-toothed smirk of a predatory nature?

EJ felt as though her head had been plunged into warm honey, thick and sticky and just as sweet. She was sent swimming without a life raft. Oh, fuck. What was happening? Was... Was this actually going on? What the fuck- Oh.

"Oh...~"

Esthrielle's words coincided with a shifting of her legs, now set to straddle one of EJ's own, so their limbs were off-set from one another. A press, a push... soft, forgiving synthetic flesh pressing itself against EJ's lap, the sensation saying volumes where words seemed meaningless. It only took a gentle shifting of the leg for Esthrielle to grind her thigh against EJ - and, in that single shift, she all but announced what they both already knew.

"Mmmh... oh, so you like that, huh? But you were sooo confident last time, you know... So-o-o determined to be on top, to give the orders, to push your girlfriends around~ Hmm? What happened, EJ? Finally remembered your place in life, yeah?" The way the light caught upon Est's fangs, making them flicker and gleam like a wolf's maw in the moonlight, sent a sinful chill through EJ's core. It was frigid, cooling, shocking... but delicious, succulent, indulgent. She wanted, in that moment, to have Esthrielle send her into a fucking ice age - to wrack her with this awful, guilty, thrilling sort of sexual terror. To remind her of her place in life.

"M-... My p-place... My place in life...?" If Esthrielle was the wolf, then Esper James was the fawn; her legs were too tired to run, and her doeish eyes were opened wide to catch the starlight thru the canopy in the moments before she was taken by this hungry, unrelenting huntress. Esper James was the sacrificial lamb at Esthrielle's altar, and she leaned her figurative head into the calming hand of her lover, shutting her eyes in the moment before the blade's kiss.

Esthrielle's eyes narrowed that much further. "Mhm... beneath another woman~"

The flash of steel, then, as the Italian's ceremonial dagger found purchase. Esper James couldn't help but warble a little at that, the vocalization spurting up and out like a stray geyser's heat and steam. Any thoughts unrelated to this moment, this scene, here with Esthrielle... they had been banished, sent to exile in the furthest reaches of that ghoulish grey matter of EJ's brain, condemned to isolation while she happily gave herself to her woman. She hadn't even noticed the way Est's ruby-red eyes were flickering, rapid fire, and constant. She almost noticed Lucretia and Zofia approach from behind - though, ever the immaculate assassins, they made it all the way to the bedside before anything was revealed.

Suddenly, two pairs of hands were taking hold of the once-blonde's sweatshirt - a pair to either arm, lifting them and stealing the garment from her. Her chest was bared immediately, warm and vulnerable and soft, and plenty appetizing to the starving wolf between her legs.

Esper James's eyes were positively locked with Est's - where normally she was a somewhat perceptive woman if only from the trauma, here and now? Every sick, hated, despicable, loathsome ounce of enjoyment she'd ever received from Judas, and her ministrations, were played out and overwritten by Esthrielle. Esper James couldn't help but imagine it... but imagine the way things would be, how they would feel, with Esthrielle putting her through that same abuse.

Hitting her. Cussing her out. Belittling her. Demeaning her. Dehumanizing her. Decades of sexual fantasies rippled up like a hidden wellspring freshly revealed in the corners of Esper James's mind - Purity had been domineering, sometimes, sure... but never mean. Never scary. And, as much as it fucking eviscerated her to admit it? To give in, to acknowledge the fucking truth?

Esper James loved the way it felt to get kicked like a dog.

She wasn't even paying attention as Lulu and Zofia played the helpers furthermore, helping the lust-addled lovers undress with the glee of twinned voyeurs. Perhaps there was something in the water... or in the air? Regardless, it was a group effort relished on all fronts. And then, when Zofi lifted EJ from behind, a hand under either arm? Holding her aloft so Esthrielle could wiggle out from beneath, and setting her back down with her cheek to the bed, using a single palm to her spine to hold her down?

Well, there was a... silent agreement. Shopping could wait for a bit. There were more immediate joys to indulge in.